When a federal appeals court invalidated the District of Columbia’s 31-year-old gun ban in a surprise 2-1 ruling in March, it set the stage for the U.S. Supreme Court to review the Second Amendment for the first time in more than 70 years. At issue is whether the constitutional right “to keep and bear arms” applies to individual citizens — or collectively resides only in a “a well-regulated militia” as gun control advocates insist.
If the high court agrees to hear the case, this contentious debate could be settled once and for all. Let’s hope the justices affirm the individual’s inviolable right to self-defense.
Recommended Stories
The D.C. law requires city residents to keep all firearms “unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock or similar device.” This means that a gun purchased for self-defense and kept at home has to be rendered inoperable in order to comply with the law.
One of the plaintiffs in this landmark case is a Federal Judiciary Center guard who was not allowed to register his service handgun for at-home protection. The appeals court did not address another part of the law that makes it illegal to carry an unregistered handgun on the streets; the provision in question applies only to handguns kept inside private homes.
In his 58-page ruling, Judge Laurence Silberman noted that the right to bear arms “pre-existed, and therefore was preserved by the Second Amendment,” although he acknowledged the city’s right to impose “reasonable restrictions.”
However, he also noted that the city did not dispute the fact that the law “appear[s] to ban moving a handgun from room to room in one’s own house, even if one has lawfully registered the firearm.”
That is hardly a reasonable restriction.
It’s hard to believe that the authors of the Bill of Rights — which expressly limits the power of government — intended that the Second Amendment be interpreted to make self-defense in one’s own home a crime.
In her petition to the Supreme Court in support of the city’s gun ban, D.C. Attorney Linda Singer argued that the Second Amendment doesn’t “require the District to stand by while its citizens die.”
The irony is inescapable. Taking away their constitutional right to defend themselves in a city with the seventh highest murder rate in the nation is tantamount to doing exactly that.
